The Kilt: The Challenge of Gen-X Elders

Wisdom? From the Irony Generation? Seriously?

“I figured you should have this now. I kept it for the last 30 years. Figured you can take it for the next 30,” says Chris, with a grin.

The Kilt/Sporran (pouch)/Sgian-dubh (dagger) belonged to Al, the cool uncle-of-a-friend and half-handed Veteran who played bass, danced like a lunatic, and loved with a Falstaffian-huge heart. In the ‘80s, he was the kind of adult who helped you get into “good trouble” and bailed you out of “bad trouble.” He introduced us to the testosterone-burning Highland games, and down two-and-a-half fingers on his dominant hand, he could still toss a caber like it was a twig.

Thus: the kilt. “An elegant garment for a more civilized age,” he said. Jokes aside: A rugged piece of kit for doing manual labor, complete with a man-purse and knife in your sock. Ridiculous and practical all at once.

He died too soon in 1994, and I’ve felt his absence continuously. For 30 years, when I’ve really wanted to gut check on life — when I’ve needed an actual Elder — he wasn’t there. So it took a few minutes before I could pull myself together enough to take the Kilt out to my car.

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From Child to Parent

I’ve been thinking a lot about GenX aging, for the obvious reasons that I am both GenX, and Aging. It was, if I’m being honest, the main reason I reached to Neil Howe from Demography Unplugged (author of The Fourth Turning is Here) a few weeks ago (full episode here) was to get a vibe check: just how unique are these feelings of inadequacy? Apparently: not.

“When they were young, they could do anything they wanted and their problem coming into midlife was agoraphobia: the fear of endless open, unlimited distance with no time horizons, no barriers, no structure.” ([00:36:56])

This is the conventional narrative of GenX: ignored latchkey kids who ran feral until middle age, at which point we became overwhelmed and overprotective. When faced with the seeming impossibility of raising kids in the aftermath of 9/11, my wife and I made the choice to run back to the woods where I’d grown up. While my kids ate dirt, broke bones and played with knives and matches, we were “overprotective” of them just like most GenX parents; Bears are much less dangerous than people.

And raising my kids, at least once a week when the river of madness roared the loudest — I would close my eyes and just ask myself: what would Al do?

He was more than a surrogate father: I lived with him and his family for two summers as a teen. We’d had countless late night talks on the porch while he pretended not to notice I had snuck a beer. His answers were good-and-goodness manifest: Respect. Honesty. Kindness. Love. Attention. Boundless joy. Smart is good. Cruel is bad. Don’t have a lot of rules, but stick to them. Lift with your legs. Don’t let your ego hurt your back.

It wasn’t how I was raised. I was raised by wolves. But it’s what I witnessed in Al, in his actions, in his family. And it seemed to work.

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From Parenting to Wisdom? Seriously?

This memorial day, I went to eat ribs at the house of my Parish Priest & Dungeon Master. He’s good at all three of those things (Priesting, DMing, and Ribs).

On the wall, near the phone, are the emergency numbers: once for babysitters, now for home-alone teens. Local police, a family member. And my wife’s cell phone. I’d never noticed it, but it must have been there for a decade. I smiled, and in my head I knew why:

My wife’s phone number is on whiteboards around town because when things get really squirrelly, she’s the “second opinion” everyone wants. Because she is wise.

Wisdom, to me, is Aristotelian Phronesis, which is to say, it’s practical. It’s knowing the right thing to do, at the right time, based not just on acumen, and not just on intuition, and not just on knowledge, but through all of those.

But this innate wisdom seems to have escaped me — and if I look around, it seems to have escaped most of my generational peers too. And I think it’s because we’ve spent our whole lives being the opposite of community-oriented-sages. We’ve spent our lives on the imagined brink of disaster, mostly disdained by generations above and below us. Black Flag & The Cure & Nine Inch Nails didn’t have a lot of lyrics about the wisdom of the saints, but boy were they good at anger and despair.

As Neil put it:

“How do you get a mature role as a leader of institutions, as a cornerstone of the community, when you've grown up thinking that you were past the end of history and not only did no one care about you, but the world would be better off if you just didn't take part?” ([00:05:54])

So we end up with Henry Rollins & Robert Smith & Trent Reznor as role models for “Eldership?” It seems ludicrous on the face of it. Neil’s thesis is that — as the coming-of-age-elders in the fourth-turning crisis of the now — we’re going to be the community builders whether we want to be or not:

“… Xers will be, believe it or not, the solid anchors of their community—whatever community you're talking about... at a time of tremendous crisis. They will be the no-nonsense, pragmatic bottom line at a time when everyone around them is losing their minds.” ([00:34:37])

Which is all well and good, until I look around and realize I have no idea how to do this. And while there has been a seeming resurgence of interest in wisdomhunting (notably through rediscovering ancient sources, from the Bible to the Buddha to Psychedelics), I haven’t found a palatable What To Expect When You’re Expecting or even a Thomas Guide for Elders.

What Are We Even Eldering?

As far as I can tell, Elders traditionally serve two big roles: Transmission and Friction.

In a more normal age, elders acted as living libraries of stories and culture and wisdom and process knowledge. My own limited exposure to traditional “elders” was largely in the church, or in Scouts, where this function of transmission-through-time was obvious in stained glass windows and WW2 era handbooks and secret handshakes. But of course, as a GenXer, I tried to sweep those old farts out of my way at every turn, ‘cause there was stuff to do. And GenX loves getting things done. Move Fast and Break Things. F-Around and Find Out. Just Do It.

For that reason, I suspect our role as GenX elders will be much less about transmission, and much more about the second feature of Elders: useful friction. While I’m an abundance-optimist long term, short term it seems pretty obvious we’re going to burn some stuff down. Our role, then, will be to preserve what we can (through inertia), and help rebuild whatever comes next (because we just do things).

This seems most obvious to me in three domains: AI, Culture, and Tribalism.

• As the online-world slides deeper and deeper into AI-Slopocalypse (where all content is dominated by high-polish mediocrity and low-creativity creation), we will be building, celebrating and teaching those very skills “everyone else” will decide are deprecated. Why do I believe this? Because Chess is more popular than ever, and it’s more pointless to be good at than ever before. We don’t do this by writing screeds against AI or trying to pass dumb laws. We learn the new tools, and we celebrate the Human in everything, from art to commerce. I genuinely believe the next decade is deeply human, and GenX can help by living as if that is already true (because it is.)

• Alongside the Slopocalypse is the ever-deepening algo-driven monoculture. I think the GenX frictional eldership here is very easy. Unsubscribe. I do not care or even know if every top 40 song sounds the same, because Kevin Alexander is a much better curator than the algo. I have no idea what’s even on network TV (much less TV News), because I can access weird game shows from Japan. GenX is very good at not caring what other people think, so they will be our best curators, editors, critics and discovery engines.

• Lastly, Neil predicts that conformist tribalism will be the defining feature of Millennials and Zoomers. Whether you believe in the 4th Turning stuff or not, I feel pretty confident we are not on the brink of a new age where differences will be celebrated. GenX has seen this before. The oldest among us remember Stonewall, the youngest lost our friends in the Castro in 1990. We practically invented Mohawks and Mosh Pits and Grills and body modification. I suspect our non-conformity will serve us well in the times to come, but here we can lead primarily by being unabashedly ourselves. If 50 and 60 year olds can’t be weird and loud in public, who will be?

How this plays out will be as individualistic as everything else about GenX. While there is plenty of room for being the old-fuddy-duddy teaching ancient artforms like making zines, or furniture, I suspect most of our “eldership” will be simply living-by-example in a different way than those coming up behind us, who have never known a world without a smartphone.

Perhaps it’s simply the act of being that will define our later years. Perhaps it’s enough to just live by Al’s simple rules, and show that this can be enough?

Respect. Honesty. Kindness. Love. Attention. Boundless joy. Smart is good. Cruel is bad. Have few rules, but make them count. Lift with your legs. Don’t let your ego hurt your back.

And when all else fails, there’s the Kilt: A more elegant garment for a more civilized age. 8 yards of wool, a pouch for some coins, and a good sharp knife in your sock. Just in case.